Sunday, May 6, 2012

Day 4 of 30 Days of Knitting

Day 4: How did you learn to knit?

Knitting:
I wish I had some cozy or interesting story about how I learned-- taught at my mother's or grandmother's knee, perhaps, but nope. I don't know if anyone in my (immediate) family even knows how to knit. I've certainly never seen them knitting. (My mother has always been "crafty", but her crafts-- as an adult, at least-- have not been yarn-based. Right now, she's very interested in quilting, and she and my maternal grandmother are both big on gardening-- mostly the decorative type with flowers, shrubs, and trees.)

I taught myself to knit from video tutorials online. Come to think of it, that's a pretty interesting (if not uncommon) way to learn to knit, I guess. It wasn't so long ago that video took too long to be practical for quick and easy watching online-- and now, just a short time later, you can find free video tutorials about almost anything, online. (I also met my husband online, incidentally... So thank goodness for the Internet. ;o) We most likely never would've met, otherwise.)

Crochet:
Now, at least a couple of people in my immediate family do know how to crochet-- though I think they haven't done much of it since the 70s or early 80s, and I get the impression they were mostly making the traditional granny squares, back then. I had a quick demonstration from my mother and one of my aunts, but I don't think I really got it-- or remembered it very well when I tried to do it on my own, later on. Then at some point, Donald's mother was visiting, and she tried to teach me a little, I think... (Or was that specifically with thread crochet? I have such an awful memory, sometimes.) Again, it didn't completely click.

I begin to think that I'm one of those weirdos who don't learn best from person-to-person instruction. I get impatient (with myself-- and self-conscious), I'm afraid. Learning from videos and photo tutorials is more to my tastes, since I can go as slow as it takes-- re-watch, pause, etc. (And talk myself through it. I'm a great believer in talking aloud to yourself. (g)) So I'm not sure exactly how I finally learned to crochet. It was a combination of help from those three people and just teaching myself (with Internet-based tutorials, again, I guess). I started learning with the old tried and true granny squares, but those first efforts were messy-- gauge all over the place, hideous in variegated yarn-- and I ended up unraveling them and using the yarn to make dish scrubbers instead, later on. (g) I think it wasn't until I was working on The Procrastination Afghan and the Flower Garden Hexagon Afghan that I began to feel like I was really crocheting and understanding what I was doing. They were great confidence-building projects.

Welcome!

I'm Michael (frequently found online as "MossyOwls"), and this is where I keep track of my crafty interests. I love to crochet, enjoy the occasional small knitting project, and am beginning to play around with (simple) machine quilting and watercolor painting. (No telling what could come next!)

Before I became obsessed with crocheting, I used to blog about another crafting passion-- polymer clay. (Might pick it up again, one of these days...)